Cruising, without going anywhere

I suppose the idea of cruising in a sailboat (or any boat for that matter) entails travel, seeing new places, meeting new people, having new experiences and generally involves the movement of your boat.

As JoAnne and I have discovered though, cruising the world at a SLOWER pace than most, we find that we make friends easily and tend to keep them, and we don’t have to move too much to do so.

Over the past three years we’ve traveled a lot, both by car and boat. We’ve been to places we’d never been together, made a lot of new friends, and found places we really enjoyed being… including Southport, NC. When we landed here, we thought we’d be moving further south as soon as possible, and that never happened due to a variety of problems. Everything from medical issues in our family, including my youngest brother, to engine issues, car problems and general circumstances conspired to keep us tied to, and in South Harbour Village Marina.

We’ve become so accustomed to being here, that when we were requested to leave the really nice slip we were in (due to the private owner selling it out to someone else) we felt like we were being evicted. We moved only a few slips down and remained on B-Dock where many of our friends live on their own boats. We even have a B-Dock group on Facebook for all of us to post things and to help one another if necessary.

Over the past year and a half here, I’ve worked for the marina. There were three reasons I took the job. The first reason was because I needed to take up some of my time, the second for the fun of it, and the third was for a little beer money or to offset the cost of the slip. The last doesn’t really do both, but, it’s sufficient I suppose. I left a job that paid me over 5 times what I make a dock hand here at the marina (including tips), so if I wanted a job that made a lot of money, I might have found something different. Mostly, this was for fun (and I even explained to the Dockmaster, “When this is no longer fun, I quit!) and it has been a lot of fun. But it’s really not my life, nor my lifestyle, nor is it something I will continue to do.

I don’t feel like I want to “die at work”. The truth is, I think we’ve heard Mother Ocean calling to us again.

We do have a deadline too. JoAnne has been cancer-free since August of 2014. We bought Adventure in January 2015, one year after her diagnosis. She spent months going in every three weeks to chemo, then the following Sunday morning to get a shot to help her white blood cells regenerate. She worked through all of it, albeit, with a few less hours than was normal.

She found this boat in November of 2014 after she was declared cancer-free. We did the survey, and eventually I wound up having my own medical issues after buying the boat. We still managed to beat mortality for a bit longer, and got to the boat, moved aboard and starting moving the boat south.

We spend long periods of time in places that we like, moving around only when necessary or when we truly HAVE to sail. We like it here, but again, we both need more, and to move on. And we’re not getting younger. In fact, JoAnne is seeing a rise in her blood work numbers about cancer.

Over the past few months, since June, her CA-125 blood test has been coming back elevated. It spiked, and in fact, doubled since last year’s test. The oncologist ordered a CT scan, and found nothing. Other tests have been performed, all showing “no problems”.

Right now we are working with local doctors, and they with Colorado doctors to set up a PET scan to determine if there is a recurrence of cancer. We will have three choices then….

We go back to Colorado if there IS a recurrence and go through whatever necessary treatment is available, designed to combat this hateful disease.

We take crap off the boat we don’t need, put food and water aboard that we do, and we set sail for the Bahamas.

If the “recurrence” isn’t great and it’s not time for chemo or other treatment, we still go (and this is what’s really up in the air at this time).

What we don’t know is how long we get to go for, how long treatments take (we can guess of course), or the outcome of such treatments. We don’t know the outcome of the PET scan, since it hasn’t been accomplished as of yet.

So, we’re hanging in Limbo right now, waiting for doctors and hospitals to arrange things and get going on this, get it done and let us know the situation.

Right now, I’m ready to quit my job to be here until she gets her medical tests done, so I’m always available for her. But, I don’t think I’ll do that yet. We also know she’s in good health, and good spirits, and has no issues at all, so we’re at the point of thinking this may be the place here blood work is going to “settle down” and stable for now. At least that’s my hope.

No matter what happens in the next few weeks, we will be making our trip to the Bahamas somehow. We prefer it to be IN our boat, under our own power, without the help of airplanes, or cars, but we don’t know yet. We also want to go back to the British Virgin Islands, again, in this boat rather than by plane. It’s going to happen, it’s only a matter of when.

I have a few things to do with the boat, nothing at all critical. She’s ready to go now, with the exception that I have a slight exhaust leak in the manifold, which probably is a relatively easy fix I think (gaskets most likely) and I want to work on a water maker system I have purchased, but haven’t even unboxed it yet. We can likely get away without using it, but, I’d like it on the boat for “just in case” at this point.

Other than that, a simple clean sweep of the boat, stowing things, and getting the deck mostly cleared is all we really have left to do to get out on a long voyage. We can leave here in minutes if necessary, though somewhat unprepared for a long trip, but short hops maybe. We’ve hesitated on starting provisioning again, due to the above medical issues keeping us waiting.

I guess, in a way, long term cruising or “extended cruisers” have to make a lot of compromises about everything from readiness to weather, to their abilities to medical problems. We are, I suppose not what some would call “cruisers” because we’re not constantly moving with the boat, but we are in so many other ways.

This town has captured our hearts. We love it here, so even if we run down the coast, or down Island we will be returning here, no matter what.

I hope all our friends, family, fans and followers will keep JoAnne in their prayers and thoughts for good a good medical report. Thank you all for reading.